60 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1922. 



ruin, " Megalithic House," was not completely excavated, but all the 

 others were repaired, the tops of the walls being covered with cement 

 to prevent future erosion. 



An important collection made by the chief in the course of the 

 summer's work contains many rare and unique specimens, an account 

 of which will later be published in a report on the excavations. 



During his Avork at the Mesa Verde the chief gave camp-fire 

 talks in the special amphitheater constructed for that purpose by the 

 superintendent of the j^ark. The average attendance on these talks 

 was about 40 each evening, and at times, as on a visit of a convention 

 of teachers, there were 150 listeners. He also spent considerable time 

 daily taking parties over tlie new work which he was doing in the 

 neighborhood of Far View House. 



Ever since 1917 the chief has been attempting to have the sites 

 of three clusters of towers in Utah withdrawn from private owner- 

 ship and made into a national monument, to be called Hovenweep 

 National Monument. Various circumstances have made it impos- 

 sible to bring this about. During the past summer, however, Mr. 

 Hatze, a Land Office survej'or, determined the metes and bounds 

 of these three clusters and later Doctor Fewkes visited them in order 

 to determine their present condition. He found that a settler had 

 filed claims on the neighboring land, the adjoining one-quarter mile 

 section, and erected his cabin. Some of the cabins in the neighbor- 

 hood have stones remarkably like those of the towers ; in other words, 

 the necessity for immediate action, if these towers are to be pre- 

 served for posterity, is apparent, and the land on which they are 

 situated should be withdrawn from settlement and the buildings put 

 under the care of proper authorities. The three groups are known 

 as the Square Tower, the Ruin Canyon group ; the Holly and Keeley 

 Towers; and the large ruin at the head of the Cajon Mesa called 

 Cool Spring House, on account of the fine water Avhich is found in 

 the cave back of the cliff house. 



During the fiscal year Dr. John R. SAvanton, ethnologist, was en- 

 gaged in extracting the words from his Hitchiti texts and adding 

 them to his dictionary on cards of the Hitchiti language, and in pre- 

 paring a grammatical sketch of 75 pages based on this material and 

 that collected by Dr. A. S. Gatschet. 



Much time was devoted to transferring words to cards from his 

 Alabama texts, and from material in Alabama secured through na- 

 tive informants, into an Alabama-English dictionary. The first 25 

 pages of a grammatical sketch of this language have also been com- 

 l^leted. 



A comparison has been made between the Natchez language on the 

 one hand and Koasati and Hitchiti on the other, in order to establish 

 the position of Natchez in the Muskhogean linguistic stock. This 



